Hey there,

First, a little intro, as I am pretty new here:

I am a 17 year old, been playing piano for about 11 years now. I've been playing classical/RCM up until last year-ish where I decided to change course. I was with a piano teacher for my first 4 or so years, then I switched to another teacher for the next 5 years. Then, after taking a short break from piano I decided to pick it up again, and I decided to get back in touch with my old teacher. He was thrilled to hear from me again and I've been taking lesson from him once again. He introduced me to jazz while I was with him, a genre that was relatively unknown to me up until he showed me. I was fascinated and I decided to drop my RCM education and pursue jazz as his apprentice, if you will.

Now, I need some popular yet not too hard jazz pieces to bring in to him. He said to bring in any songs I might wanna learn and I have, but I need some more now. So far I've brought in the likes of "You've Got a Friend in Me" , "What a Wonderful World" , "White Christmas" , "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", etc. Any more popular jazz pieces that I will know and are fun to play/relatively easy?

Two popular jazz standards that aren't too difficult: Autumn Leaves and All The Things You Are. There is a study group for both pieces in the Adult Beginners' Forum: http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthrea...tml#Post1010110

There's tons of free transcriptions of arrangements by Fats Waller, Art Tatum, James P. Johnson, Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson, Keith Jarrett, George Gershwin, etc. available on the web.

Some of them are here:
http://www.classicscore.hut2.ru/A.html

Try Jarrett's arrangement of Over the Rainbow from this site:
http://dark-intervals.com/

Jazz is as difficult or as easy as you make it. Get a fake book, and learn to read from charts. The important thing is to think of a piece in terms of its rhythms and harmonies, not as a series of notes.

Another thing you can do is go the other way, and reduce pieces that you have played before to charts, and then think of ways you can inject your style into them.

I agree with BDB, buy what is called the "Fake Book" or now called the "Real Book" and learn to read jazz charts. This will open up a very large repertoire for you.